What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Corinthians 3:5-9)
What a wonderful passage! This really provides a great deal of comfort for us as we go about the mission of making disciples. Too often we take on ourselves a part of the discipling process that does not belong to us.
As we engage our neighbors with the good news of Jesus, there is a time for planting seeds. In other words, sharing with them the news about Jesus. At other times, they may ask questions regarding our faith, or about Jesus. Answering these questions is like watering the seeds previously planted. And even once that seed of faith takes root and sprouts, and a person becomes a follower of Jesus, there will be plenty more watering as their faith grows.
But you may not directly participate in all those stages of discipleship. It may be that you share the gospel of Jesus, but someone else, even at a later time, answers their questions and leads them to faith in Jesus. And yet another may disciple them as a new believer.
Through it all, we are to remember three things.
1. Whether we plant, or water, it is God who causes things to grow. We have no power over the growth of a living thing.
This means you can be faithful and trust God. If a disciple grows, you’ve got no grounds for boasting. God did it. If you plant seeds, season after season, or water faithfully, and someone does not trust Christ, you’ve got no reason to feel failure. Nothing you could do would cause growth anyway. That is up to God!
2. The worker get’s paid for his labor, not the abundance of the harvest.
We win no prizes for the number of disciples made. That is God’s work, after all. He rewards his servants for their faithfulness to his will, not for something they have no part in. Growing disciples is God’s work. Any “Well done, good and faithful servant.” that we hear from God in eternity, will be because we were faithful, not because our church is big, or because we led a lot of people to Christ.
Faithfulness (long obedience in the same direction) is the measure of our success as disciples who make disciples.
3. We’re all working for the owner of the field.
We’re “fellow workers” with each other, and with God himself! There is no competition among God’s servants, because it’s not about our glory. It is all about his glory. He owns the field. He causes the growth of faith resulting in a harvest. We are simply working in his fields.
This means the harvest is his, not ours. It is easy to become possessive of the people in our church or small group, thinking they are “our” people. But this passage tells us that no matter how much effort we put into discipling someone, we are laborers. God is the “Lord of the harvest” and the field belongs to him. They are His people, not ours.
As a church planter and pastor, this is a hard truth to own. Even as a teacher, or simply a faithful Christian making disciples in your own neighborhood, it can be hard to guard your heart from this. It is so easy to become competitive and possessive, to compare the results of your efforts against the labor of others. But this is no true test, because even if the harvest where you are working is small, and somewhere else it is large, neither of you had anything to do with it. Growth is God’s work!
Let’s stop viewing each other as competitors. Let’s stop using numbers as a measure of our success. And let’s start trusting God to do his work wisely, while we do our work faithfully.
And let’s,
…pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into HIS harvest. (Matthew 9:38)
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